New York, NY (September 28, 2026)—I was starting to get a little concerned, as everybody seems to like ultra-wide mixes these days—more than I do at least. My width-creating plug-ins do a fine job on individual tracks, but with full mixes, the bottom-end loses power, punch evaporates and image stability becomes unpredictable. I’ve had difficult dialogues with clients about width and needed a solution; it appears that Stereovault has solved my problem.

Stereovault is a stereo image processor that tackles the entire issue of widening and narrowing of just about any source, in one multi-faceted, multi-methodology, complete plug-in.

A half-dozen Tabs can be used individually or together, and they all operate with multiple frequency bands, up to six each, allowing a level of deep control previously unseen. For the most invisible processing (mixes or mastering), the global Transparent mode is recommended, utilizing the exact same frequency bands/divisions across all Tabs. Conversely, Flexible mode allows the assigning of different frequency bands on each Tab, creating opportunity for wilder, not as phase-stable, processing.

Auditioning Tabs is made comfortable with level matching, individual bypasses and graphics that do a good job of visualizing the madness you sonically create as you invariably push parameters to extremes. The artistry lies in their ability to interact with each other for surgically complex image manipulation. The six Tabs are:

Spread: MTM calls this the cleanest way to widen, using Mid/ Side processing. Diffuse mode uses Gerzon per-band diffusion transparently, Vintage uses frequency-splitting techniques ideal for altering mono sources.

Creative: As implied, this Tab allows for the most extreme and interesting uses, employing one of five processes: Stretch (using comb filtering), Space (a tight and diffuse reverb), Haas (short panned delays), Chorus (short modulated delays) and Flux (slowly creeping movement, for long sustained sources).

Panorama: Allows standard panning, not full-bandwidth, but individually for each frequency band; or the oddly named Skew, which is actually reversing/swapping the placement within each band.

Rotate: Allows processing by rotating the signal, with stereo control or Mid/Side independence.

Width: Uses mid and side level controls, Blend mode swaps the two, and Balance allows individual channel level control.

Clean: Uses Mid/Side EQ for tight, surgical processing with the least phase problems.

As with many MTM plug-ins, Smart mode will analyze a portion of your audio and recommend a variety of settings—source-dependent, genre-dependent and ranging from subtle to animated. Analysis asks you to first pick between Mix, Bass, Drums, Music and Vocals; then you must choose between limited choices of Country, Electronic, Hip Hop, Pop and Rock. Finally, the four choices for each genre include Focused, Balanced, Wide and Super Wide. You’re either done at this point, or able to further tweak the recommendation or try other choices (there’s also a bunch of not-analysis- based presets, too).

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If you’d rather emulate one of your favorite stereo images, you can always load a reference file (drag and drop) and have Stereovault do all the work under the hood. You can widen your skill set (no pun intended) by seeing what processes Stereovault cleverly chose, and then further manipulate them.

With such a large plate of options, some deep analysis, metering and visualization control is necessary. Thankfully, these controls are hidden as pop-ups, keeping the GUI cleaner. The Visualizer window permits extensive control of the visual display’s responsiveness, with speed, phase and amplitude options. I/O obviously controls routing, allowing mono, Mid/Side and reversing options. Trim controls input and output gain, in stereo or Mid/Side. Scope utilizes a Lissajou display for stereo correlation and phase.

IN SESSION

I mentioned that I’ve had width problems as of late, so right off the bat, I tackled a recent power ballad mix that I had gotten just barely sufficiently wide using mix skills, without widening plugs, at least not on the mix bus. I selected four frequency bands and clicked Analyze, as Stereovault inspected about 10 seconds of the mix’s loudest portion. I then selected Rock from the genre-based pull-down and listened to Stereovault’s suggestions. They were very good, but, as you’ve likely already guessed, an old-hand like myself would rather dig deeper and mine for gold.

With some very careful adjustments using Transparent mode, and Clean and Width Tabs, I dialed in the ideal. I made the bottom-end mono below 60 Hz, kept the low-mids untouched, ever so slightly widened the high-mids and gave some moderate width to the high end. The result? My subs hit with more solidity, my low-mids stayed warm and “out of the way,” my upper-mids saw no change in vocal level or dominance (just size), and the drums opened up with non-distracting width in the overheads only.

I later tackled some mastering work with Stereovault, work that needed heavier lifting and careful decision-making across 10 not-all-that-consistently- mixed songs. With Transparent mode, with mostly Width or Clean (and a little use of Spread for interest and Rotate to rebalance left-to-right), I got that LP in shape better than I could have without Stereovault, and did it a lot faster than I expected. It deserves mention that I neatly narrowed a couple of spots with Stereovault—not as glamorous, but uniquely powerful and equally important!

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That’s all fine and subtle, but sometimes (okay, often) it’s very satisfying to take a mono source, spread it out like crazy and push it to the periphery of a mix. Many plug-ins are capable of this process, and I have more than a few, but Stereovault made them all seem a bit limited. Spread is great fun, Panorama is downright twisted and Creative is a rabbit hole of epic proportion. I’m not being hyperbolic here. The ability to tug, stretch and treat audio like taffy is powerful, but to do all that with frequency-band specificity is out of this world! As if this weren’t enough, I haven’t even automated such madness yet. I think I’m going to be testing someone’s patience at the next attended mix session

And let’s not forget sound design(ers), who might actually use all of Stereovault’s tabs and modes the most profoundly. It’s not hard to imagine some automated Panorama or Creative stretch effect realistically following on-screen action, or conversely a multi-tab, Flexible-mode, automated Spread and Rotate mind-warp for some sci-fi bizarreness.

THE FINAL MIX

And there lies the ultimate strength of Stereovault: the overall versatility. Veterans can dig in well beyond the elbows if they wish, as the sheer number of controls, choices and techniques is limitless and everything functions properly. The only fear is bad taste. For those who don’t revel in difficulty, the analysis, recommendations and reference-matching are likely sufficient, with deep control of parameters not necessary.

A typical modern mix could have Stereovault all over it in a variety of ways, utilizing the full spectrum of powers: width to the drum kit, slow drift to pads, mono-compatible freq-specific size to bass, mono’ing the subs, animating the vocal and warping some elements until they tickle the ear dancing outside the bulk of the soundstage. Maybe even subtly across the whole mix. Ultrawide mixes? Not a problem anymore.